Our global-English pronunciation skills programs redirect most people’s attention to sound. I say “most” because we have occasionally worked with musically-inclined folks. They see/hear the world in sound.
Deceptively simple sound materials
One common response that I get when I check in about the materials a couple of weeks into the program is that they are deceptively simple. Upon first glance, it all seems pretty straight forward. Watch an intro video. Reflect. Attend a mini-lecture of the speech training materials at hand. Go through each day’s workbook-style practice page, which includes carefully-sequenced controlled and free practice tasks. This is pretty straight forward in that it’s all laid out for the speaker-in training.
The direction and redirection of one’s attention, however, is not so straight forward. Starting to pay frequent attention to how others are speaking, both in English and one’s native language, can prove both productive and a wee disruptive. Disruptive because the speaker-in-training is momentarily focusing more on sound and less on the content or information.
For most folks, putting any given speech topic into spontaneous practice is usually difficult in the beginning. Again, the process of adjusting one speech in a second (or third, fourth, fifth, etc.) language is deceptively simple.
Curious how we talk about what we talk about often?
I’ve recently rebooted a newslettery email series. Each Sunday, I share insights, tips and resources that are intended to help folks improve–or at least think about–their spoken English. It’s conversational in tone and I use idioms freely.
